Send to a Friend <% dim printurl printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%> Version

September 26, 2002, 11:55 a.m. The New Imperium On the globalization of terrorism; Part IV. By Roger Scruton EDITOR'S NOTE: This is Part III in a series of excerpts from Roger Scruton's new book The West and the Rest, published by the ISI Books. The first installment of the Scruton series can be read here. The second here. The third here.

s the nation-state a durable arrangement? Consider England — the most successful example of a localized territorial jurisdiction in the modern world. Just when and for how long did it exist as a nation-state? The skeptic would say: for about the length of time required to absorb its northern neighbor; in other words, from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to the Act of Union with Scotland of 1707. Thereafter it expanded relentlessly into an empire, acquired, in Sir John Seeley's famous words, "in a fit of absence of mind"10 — i.e., not by policy, still less by any corporate decision on the nation's behalf, but by "an invisible hand," in other words, as the unintended by-product of a myriad actions, very few of which were actions of the state. And those who accuse the United States of being, or becoming, a new imperial power are pointing to a similar process, whereby the legislative powers of smaller states are being steadily expropriated by transnational institutions that only the United States can really control or escape from.

Perhaps the most telling example of the invisible hand of imperialism, however, is not the United States, but the European Union (EU). Europe is the home of the nation-state, and the crucible in which the idea of secular and territorial jurisdiction first took shape. At the same time recent history has implanted in many of the European elites a skepticism towards the national idea and a desire for a transnational federation in place of it. The British and Scandinavian people are reluctant to accept this; the Mediterranean people accept it only because they do not take it wholly seriously. But many of the French and the Germans remain wedded to the idea as the best way of maintaining the peace and prosperity of Europe. At the same time, the majority of the decisions that are forcing the Europeans to abandon their national sovereignties are made by people who have no intention to produce an imperial power.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that virtually nobody explicitly wants it, a process is under way that will effectively extinguish the national democracies of Europe and erect in their place a European superstate, nominally a democracy but with largely unaccountable legislative powers, hidden in bureaucratic institutions with their own long-term agendas. Already most laws passed by the United Kingdom Parliament are imposed by diktaat from the Brussells bureaucracy, and the few areas of legislative competence that remain are being steadily eroded by revisions to the Treaty of Rome. Scotland and Wales are still present on the official maps of Europe. But the nation-state that did most to create the modern world — namely England — has already been replaced by "regions" that have no historical meaning and defy all the local loyalties to which English patriotism responds.

There are those who regret this, and those who welcome it, as an opportunity to revive the idea of Western civilization on the continent where that civilization was born. The question that we need to ask, however, is whether this new form of imperial government can really answer to the problems that now confront us. If my argument is correct, the European superstate will not be held in place by its political institutions. Only in the context of a pre-political loyalty will those institutions have legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens, and it is precisely the absence of a pan-European loyalty that gave rise to the federal project in the first place.

Suppose a village has existed for centuries as an autonomous community, its residents making decisions collectively through their elected council and enjoying all the benefits and burdens of self-government. And suppose that a neighboring, similarly self-governing but somewhat larger, town proposes to amalgamate with the village, arguing that the increased prospects for trade and commerce fully justify the move, and that the new community will be just as democratic and self-governing as the old ones. Suppose, finally, that the villagers are persuaded, and do indeed enjoy the promised commercial benefits. They will find themselves as a result in a minority whenever a decision affecting their interests is to be made, and will be overridden by the town whenever the interests of town and village conflict. The new waste-disposal site will be placed on the borders of the village, not the town; the highway will be built through the village, not the town; and so on. In short, the villagers will experience their new democratic regime as a loss of sovereignty and a diminution in their democratic powers.

That is what is beginning to happen in Europe; indeed it has already happened with such measures as the expropriation of British fisheries by France and Spain and the imposition on Britain of metric weights and measures. Americans do not need reminding, in this context, of the controversy over "states' rights." The evident conclusion is that, just as the village in my example will begin to resent the town and regard its decisions as illegitimate, so will the nation-states of Europe seek to break away from the Union, as the conflicts of interest re-animate the desire for national autonomy.

It is significant that, in all major crises that affect the root sentiments of the people, the national governments of Europe entirely set aside the transnational project to which they profess to be committed. After September 11 the British Prime Minister immediately joined with the United States, not only in condemning terrorism, but in committing his country and its armed forces to the fight against it. Other European countries made vague noises in the same direction, but did nothing. And subsequent pronouncements from France, Italy, and Germany have displayed a veiled but growing anti-Americanism, and a wish not to be involved. The French in particular prefer to see September 11 as an alien event affecting an alien people. A book arguing that no plane crashed into the Pentagon on September 11 and that those which hit the twin towers were guided there by the CIA has even become a bestseller in France.

Similarly the French have refused to police the entrance to the channel tunnel, knowing that the best way to rid themselves of illegal immigrants is by passing them on to Britain, where the welfare deal is more attractive. In this matter that affects the national interest and national identity of the two countries, pre-political loyalty shows itself at once, and it is the very same loyalty that shaped Europe as a system of nation-states.

Nor is it likely that a new kind of pre-political loyalty could arise from the European Union. All the factors that formed the loyalties of the European peoples — shared language, shared religion, shared customs, shared legal systems, and shared ways of life — are absent. Hence, the European Union is rapidly destroying the territorial jurisdictions and national loyalties that have, since the Enlightenment, formed the basis of European legitimacy, while putting no new form of membership in their place. It is significant that separatist and nationalist movements, far from being eroded by the project of union, have grown under its aegis, taking heart from the EU's antipathy to existing nationalisms to promote rival nationalisms of their own. Hence the renewed activities of the IRA and the Basque separatist organization ETA.

On the other hand, the very fervor with which the project of union is promoted by the European elites is some indication that the national loyalties of Europe are in decline. The EU is a political expression of the culture of repudiation that I described in chapter 2, and goes hand-in-hand with legislative initiatives from the European Commission and the European courts that could be used to bind the entire continent in a regime of enforced political correctness. The commission proposes a Europe-wide police force, with power to extradite from any jurisdiction to any other within the Union, and with a list of extraditable offenses that include "racism and xenophobia." This offense is unrecognized in English law and as yet undefined by the courts. But anybody who has followed the reasoning of the European elites knows how it could be used: namely, to suppress any kind of nationalist opposition to the centralized bureaucracy.

Entering this new and bewildering political labyrinth the Muslim immigrant will certainly find a freedom and a prosperity that are unfamiliar in his country of origin. He will also enjoy welfare benefits, free education — or at any rate "education" — for his children, and free medical services. He will find plenty of work on the illegal market, since the states of the European Union have raised the cost of employing people to the point where small enterprises can no longer afford to offer work in the official economy. What the Muslim immigrant will not find, however, is any process of nation-building that might serve to recruit him to membership in the surrounding social order. He will live in strict isolation, and regard the world in which he earns his living as of no independent concern to him. Such membership as he enjoys will come to him from his family and the immigrant community to which his family belongs. And it will depend upon their shared obedience to the rituals of prayer and fasting and to the revealed will of God.

The new European superstate therefore offers a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists. Just as the official culture of Europe involves a repudiation of the nation and its pride, so does the Muslim terrorist target the nation-state as the true work of Satan. The attacks on America were a response to the world's most successful attempt at nation-building, which projects its power, its freedom, and its detritus so effectively around the globe. All the principal actors in the atrocities of September 11 had resided in Europe, and received there both training and indoctrination through the local cells of al Qaeda. The plot to attack America was not hatched in any Muslim country, but on the continent where the West began.

— Roger Scruton is among the most prominent contemporary English writers. A philosopher who was a formerly a professor at Birkbeck College in London and at Boston University, he is now a freelance writer living in Wiltshire.